


Adrift

by Cameron_McKell



Series: Adrift and Related Works [3]
Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Child Abandonment, Child Neglect, F/M, Gen, Homelessness, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Phobias, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Starvation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-02-23 07:59:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2540300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cameron_McKell/pseuds/Cameron_McKell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wally keeps spending more and more time at Mt. Justice...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Friday

**Author's Note:**

> Story tags may seem excessive, but forewarned is forearmed. 
> 
> Being written for a prompt on the Young Justice Anon Meme (link: http://yjanon-meme.livejournal.com/676.html?thread=1608612#t1608612 ).

**Keystone City, Friday, August 27 2010, 22:37 CDT**

  
  


The party had wound down hours ago.

  
  


After cake (and some newly acquired ice cream – Wally's fault), the Garricks had called it an early night, and wished all the 'youngsters' a good night and went home.

  
  


Uncle Barry and Aunt Iris stayed around to chat and help clean up (Wally's fault again) for a while, until about nine o'clock, when Barry got called up to the Watchtower for a mission briefing, and Iris took it as a sign to head home herself – she had an early morning plane to catch for GBS.

  
  


Wally had lingered by the door for a while after his aunt's goodbye – long enough to listen to the steady thrum of her car driving off, until the sound faded into the background noise of nighttime – then zipped to his room with a mild gust of wind.

  
  


"So, _now_ you decide to put that speed of yours to work?"

  
  


The tone of voice was deceptively mild, and later Wally wouldn't be able to say for sure if it had come from his mother or father.

  
  


It was the start of things spiraling _wildly_ out of hand, though.

  
  


Now, Wally was sprawled out over the front porch, clutching the back of his head that had knocked solidly against the steps when he'd stumbled and fell, ears ringing, and locked out of his home.

  
  


Locked out, like a stranger, or an unwanted guest.

  
  


He righted himself with a wince – the change in altitude wasn't helping the throbbing in his head, and the accelerated healing always seemed so _slow_ when he was freshly injured – and tried to think about what to do.

  
  


Immediately, his thoughts turned to Barry and Iris, but that wouldn't work; Aunt Iris was probably already in bed and didn't need the interruption, not to mention that she was flying to New York in the morning for that U.N. superhero thing and wouldn't have time to babysit him, as it were, and for all he knew, Barry could be halfway to Jupiter by now – Uncle Hal usually only called people in for extra-solar missions.

  
  


There was Joan and Jay, but it'd been a relatively long time since he'd been to their house and he couldn't exactly remember the address. He had their phone number in his cell phone, but that was locked up in his room, along with his toothbrush, and clean clothes, and... yeah.

  
  


At least he hadn't changed for bed, yet. That was something.

  
  


The more he thought about it, the less he wanted to bother them with his teenage drama, as well. Wally didn't even know if they had anything like a guest room, or a couch large enough to sleep on, anyway.

  
  


Maybe he could stay with a friend?

  
  


... That would be easier if he had a lot of friends. He had a couple from school, but he wasn't especially close to any of them, and the same issue with addresses and phone numbers locked away with his parents applied. He couldn't exactly start knocking on every door in the city, after all.

  
  


It would be a bit of a trip... but there was Dick.

  
  


With Dick came Batman, though. Bruce had never really seemed to approve of him, mandatory inclusion on the Team notwithstanding, and had been laying the Bat-glare on particularly thick, lately. Wally wasn't sure if it was something he'd done, or his and Dick's regularly scheduled mentor-protege friction, or even indigestion, but a stay at Wayne Manor would be decidedly unpleasant at present, despite Dick's generally awesome self.

  
  


Thinking about Dick eventually led him to thoughts of the Team, and Mt. Justice.

  
  


He had a room there, for crashing in after particularly brutal missions.

  
  


After nearly drowning during the fiasco with Cheshire and the Fog, Wally had stashed a few changes of clothes there, and he was pretty sure the bathroom was stocked with basic essentials like toothpaste and stuff.

  
  


That could work.

  
  


With a last, longing look at the locked and now-dark house behind him, Wally zipped off toward the zeta beam in Central City.

  
  


He'd crash at the Cave over the weekend – he could even beg food off Megan while he was there, it was a win-win; she loved to cook, and he loved to eat – then come back home for school on Monday.

  
  


His parents would _have_ to have calmed down by then, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The party referenced in this chapter is the one shown in the Young Justice episode, "Downtime".


	2. Saturday

**Mount Justice, Saturday, August 28 2010, 08:23 EDT**

 

M'gann turned back from her recipe book to the stove top, and jolted up into the air in surprise, concentration scattered. "Wally!"

 

The speedster in question zipped around her to catch the falling bowl of batter that until recently had been following her around the kitchen like a dutiful, floating puppy, and gave it an experimental stir. "Hey, Megawatt. What's cooking?"

 

"I, what?" M'gann gently lowered herself to the floor, and looked over to the heating, but still empty pan right by Wally's elbow. This was a trick question, right? "Nothing's cooking yet, Wally. I was just about to start making pancakes, but the pan's still empty."

 

Wally nodded somewhat sheepishly – he probably felt bad for startling her – then flickered between the sink and her pan faster than her eyes could track. There was a brief but loud hiss of steam, and Wally set aside the bowl of pancake batter so he could frown thoughtfully into the pan. M'gann walked closer just in time to see him turn down the heat on the pan by about ⅓, uncharacteristically slow and gentle in his actions. "What are you doing, Wally?"

 

"Thepanwastoohot," he replied absently, words running together since he wasn't actively slowing his speech down to match hers. A wisp of thought floated through the kitchen – full of Bunsen burners and tending delicate chemical mixtures one moment, and a woman's gentle explanation as she first flicked water into a waiting skillet, then playfully into the surprised face of a four-year-old Wally standing precariously on a chair the next – as Wally flickered between the sink and pan again, flicking water onto the metal surface just like the woman, presumably his mother, had shown him.

 

M'gann tightened her control over her telepathic abilities, so as not to pry into her friend's private thoughts.

 

Instead of hissing and evaporating immediately, the water formed into little balls, and skittered across the surface of the pan almost as if it were dancing. Wally grinned, then poured in a small amount of the batter without any sort of oil or butter to keep it from sticking, and started rapid-fire chattering about seemingly unrelated topics. M'gann caught something about pores, and how metal behaved as it heated, a chemical reaction discovered by a Frenchman named Louis Camille Maillard, and a dozen other things while Wally just let the pancake sit there, bubbles slowly appearing and popping over the uncooked surface.

 

"Um, Wally... Shouldn't you be doing something? The pancake's going to stick."

 

"Not yet," he replied sunnily, but reached for a spatula in preparation anyway. He used it to wave a small breeze in her face which she reflexively floated away from with a smile, then he resumed talking, about the thermal properties of silicone, region-specific terminology and its potential effect on the Team, spoon vampires, the pros and cons of tempting salmonella poisoning, then finally the growth habits of bacteria in relation to temperature while he slipped the spatula under the pancake and flipped it like it was nothing.

 

It didn't stick, at all, and was a nice golden-brown color on top of that.

 

The second side didn't take nearly as long to cook as the first since the pancake was already mostly done, and soon enough M'gann was grabbing a plate for Wally to slip it out from the pan, ready for new batter to be poured in. It smelled delicious.

 

"Wow Wally," M'gann fawned over the perfect little pancake. "That was really neat. How'd you do it?"

 

Wally's smile seemed to slip for a moment, and he rubbed the back of his head with the hand not holding the spatula. "Uh... I just told you, Megs."

 

M'gann blinked in surprise, then blushed in mild embarrassment with a sheepish smile. "Ah, right. I'm sorry; I guess I wasn't paying close enough attention."

 

Wally just nodded, and turned away to pour more batter into the pan. "Happens to the best of us. Don't sweat it."

 

"I mean," M'gann hurried to explain. "You were talking so quickly, about so many things, that I guess I sort of got lost in all of the words..."

 

Wally blurred for a moment, but if he moved away from the stove M'gann couldn't track it, then came back into focus as he turned around, a huge grin fixed onto his face.

 

"You've got this from here, right?" He zipped forward before she could reply, placing the spatula into her hand and pushing her in front of the pan. "Justwaituntilthebubblessetaftertheypopbeforeyouflipandyou'llbefine!" He stopped by the plate with the lone completed pancake just long enough to coat it in peanut butter and grab the bottle of maple syrup, then zipped away.

 

"Thanks for the food; it's delicious as always!" His voice echoed back to M'gann in the kitchen from some distant corner of the cave, and she turned back to the pan with a baffled smile. That Wally...

 

She'd completely forgotten to ask him what he was doing here on a Saturday, and the thought slipped her mind as she tried – and only somewhat succeeded – to recreate Wally's pancake-cooking technique.

 

She couldn't _wait_ for Superboy to try these pancakes.

 

* * *

 

 

Wally ducked into the storage room, then wedged himself in the corner between two shelving units, shoving the pancake into his mouth desperately. It really _was_ delicious, but that thought barely even registered at the moment.

 

Stupid.

 

Dad was right; he just _couldn't_ keep his mouth shut for two minutes. Seconds, even.

 

Trying to ignore the tremble in his sweaty hands and the pounding in his head, he twisted the squirt top off of the maple syrup bottle and desperately chugged down the thick, sugary liquid.

 

They were just empty calories, yes, and wouldn't help against any impending vitamin deficiencies, but he was just _so_ _ **hungry**_.

 

He slumped against the shelving unit - which looked to be full of floor cleaner; he could almost smell the sulfites – and decided to rest for a while, at least until he wasn't feeling so shaky anymore.

 

He'd grab a snack later.

 

... If he could manage to keep his mouth shut.

 

M'gann was probably glad to have the kitchen back to herself and peacefully quiet. What use did a telepath have for talking, anyway?

 

Wally blinked back the tears before they could even _think_ about falling, and just sat there reading the chemical information for a while. Yep, sodium metabisulfite.

 

He clamped down on the urge to tell someone about his success at identifying a chemical by smell alone.

 

Progress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The woman in Wally's memory is his aunt Iris, not his mother. She is approximately 17 in the memory.
> 
> In order and better explained at non-speedster speeds, Wally was talking about: The reason why food sticks to pans is because of tiny pores/microfissures in the pan's surface that more or less reach out and grab food at too low of temperatures, but as the metal of the pan heats, it expands and seals these fissures for a smooth (and more properly non-stick) surface. From there, he moves on to why food sticks if the pan's too hot, because of the chemical reaction of caramelizing sugars/proteins etc. that happens when the food cooks, in a process called the Maillard Reaction, and how this causes the food itself to grab onto the pan for a while, but will release from the pan when complete (provided the pan doesn't have a hold of the food).
> 
> For the second half, Wally's just picked up a spatula, so he talks about what it's made of - silicone - and how it can recover and keep its shape etc. while being frozen, or heated to approximately 500°F (260°C), then he moves on to how spatulas got their name - from the diminutive of the Latin word 'spathe' meaning 'broadsword' - and how in some areas, spatulas were called flippers, followed by some conjecture on what Kaldur would feel about or say to that etc. After that tangent, he tells M'gann about the spatula's recently-invented cousin, the spoonula, and fond memories of risking salmonella poisoning from eating raw eggs, in favor of licking the spatula/spoonula clean when making cakes/cookies/etc. with his aunt, followed by a final aside about salmonella itself, and how it's not actually as common as one would fear, at least in America where eggs are generally refrigerated, because in the event an egg is contaminated, bacteria like that doesn't really grow much outside of 40°F-140°F (4.44°C-60°C), and most refrigerators keep food at 38°F (3.33°C) to prevent this.
> 
> Sodium metabisulfite is the active ingredient of a floor cleaner I didn't think to remember the name of, pulled from its publicly-available MSDS (Materials Safety Data Sheet).


	3. Sunday

**Mount Justice, Sunday, August 29 2010, 23:04 EDT**

  


Superboy tromped down the ramp leading into Mt. Justice grumbling more from fatigue than irritation.

  


Today... hadn't been the greatest.

  


He stretched out the muscles in his shoulders idly on the way to his room, when an unexpected sound caught his attention.

  


A heartbeat.

  


The soft, _'thud-a-thud-a-thud-a'_ pattern ruled out M'gann – normally, and especially when sleeping, her heartbeat was near-unique among all he'd heard; the only one similar was her uncle's, which made sense, seeing as they were both Martians – but the pattern was quicker than the average human.

  


Much quicker; he estimated it somewhere in the 300-350 beats per minute range.

  


Another near-unique heartbeat.

  


Either there was an intruder in the mountain, or a Flash.

  


Curiosity won out over his desire for sleep, so he followed the rapidly pulsing sound until he was standing outside of what looked to be an unused office.

  


Wally had set up shop at the desk; he was slightly huddled over a pad of paper, chewing on the end of a pen despite the small selection of snack foods by his elbow, while staring at the paper with a resigned, yet contemplative expression.

  


"What are you doing?" Superboy asked, apparently startling Wally enough that he gasped and nearly inhaled the pen cap.

  


"Superboy!" He managed after spitting the pen cap back out. "Hey, uh. I didn't see you there."

  


"I noticed," he replied, frowning slightly in embarrassment. Wally's heartbeat had spiked up over 400 BPM; he hadn't meant to frighten him, but he seemed to do it to everyone all the time anyway. "You've usually gone home by now."

  


Wally stared blankly at him for a fraction of a second, before literally shaking himself back into the moment. "Oh! Yeah, uh, normally I'd be long gone by now, but... Well, I had homework."

  


He gestured at the paper in front of him, and Superboy's eyes followed the motion, but between the angle caused by his distance to the desk, his unfamiliarity with reading upside-down, and Wally's hasty, messy scrawl that pretended to be handwriting, he couldn't read any of the words.

  


There were a few shapes, though.

  


"Math?" he guessed.

  


"English, actually," Wally corrected, rubbing the back of his neck in uncharacteristic bashfulness. "I have a bad tendency to start... illustrating my essay points, instead of taking the time to describe them. Also it extends my page count."

  


Wally must have seen the confusion on his face – what tactical purpose could page count possibly serve? – because he changed the subject. "So how did you know I was in here? I stocked up on snacks earlier so I wouldn't have to bang around in the kitchen this late and wake everyone." He gestured to the assorted snacks by his elbow, then picked up a Lightspeed bar and began to absently unwrap it without changing his gaze away from Superboy.

  


All the direct attention was both pleasant after the day he'd had, and a bit embarrassing.

  


"Your heartbeat," Superboy replied. "I heard it when I came inside." He didn't add that at first he'd thought there might have been an intruder. There wasn't, so that didn't matter anymore.

  


"Oh. Dude, sorry about that." He smiled sheepishly. "I can move this party into one of the soundproof rooms so you can sleep, yeah?" That said, he stuffed the newly-unwrapped Lightspeed bar in his face, and carefully piled the rest of the snacks onto the pad of paper, then picked it up to carry it out.

  


Superboy held the door for him, then closed it as an idea occurred to him. "You don't usually work on your homework here." He didn't say it as a question, but implied it with a slight tilt of his head.

  


"Would you believe that I was looking for a quiet place to study?" Wally replied after swallowing. "It's kind of ironic: I go looking for somewhere quiet, and in doing so make a racket for you. Sorry, Supey."

  


Being called 'Supey' was another thing that felt both pleasant and embarrassing to Superboy, so he looked away. "Don't worry about it."

  


Wally nodded, and his sheepish expression mellowed with warmth. "Night, Supey."

  


Superboy just nodded without a word, and turned to leave him in peace.

  


The two of them parted ways, Superboy heading toward his room for some long-anticipated sleep, while Wally toted off his selection of snacks and homework toward the med bay, which had some of the best soundproofing in the Cave to help with recovery.

  


* * *

 

 

Wally dumped his armload onto a tray table, then tugged it over to the nearest bed, where he sat down on top of the covers and got back to work.

  


It was taking him longer than usual to do the assignment for two main reasons, the first being that all of his notes were locked up at his parents house, along with all his school supplies – it was a lucky thing for him to find that office pre-stocked with the paper pad and pens, because what little money he'd had he'd spent on food – and the second reason being that he'd already done it once, and subconsciously (and consciously, if he were honest with himself) didn't want to do it _again_.

  


The paper was waiting in his backpack by his bedroom door, ready to go for Monday, which was – oh _man_ , he wasn't going to be getting _any_ sleep tonight – almost here.

  


He shifted position on the bed uncomfortably and rubbed his eyes, trying to focus on the words he was putting on the page. He did _not_ think about the cupboards and shelves of supplies all around the room, full of chemicals and drugs he knew the _exact_ functions and possible side effects for, as well as scalpels and needles and other devices used to help healapersonby _cuttingintothem_ , and –

  


Wally kind of hated hospitals.

  


He hadn't liked them before becoming Kid Flash, but now, afterward? His powers burned through most anesthetic _really_ quickly, and he had a tendency to get knocked around at around 500 mph, so he was in the hospital, or otherwise being treated, a _lot_.

  


So the med bay was a place he usually avoided when he could.

  


It was the reason why he hadn't worked on his homework in here to start with.

  


Supey asking about it had reminded him, but when he'd first sat down to work, he'd thought about the super hearing. Megan had already been in her room when he came back from his run around Central – the League got the big stuff while Uncle Barry was gone on missions like this, but they tended to miss the smaller, petty crimes with their attention split like that – so he'd hoped to just work _quietly_ enough not to bother her or Superboy, whom he hadn't seen all day.

  


Even when trying to be silent, he disrupted people.

  


Guilt dampened his mood further, and he slipped his legs under the hospital-style blanket to try and make himself feel better. It didn't really help, though it did make him a little warmer.

  


Struggling to keep his eyes open, fully aware of the sort of nightmares he'd have if he slept here, Wally tried his hardest to finish the English assignment.

  


If he went to school early, he could catch the breakfast program so he wouldn't have to eat as much of Megan and Supey's food, and if he grabbed some of the Lightspeed bars he used on missions to snack on between that and lunch, he should be able to manage okay until school got out. After that, he'd go home to see if Mom and Dad had calmed down enough over the weekend so he could apologize.

  


He just had to... keep his eyes open... long enough... to finish...

  


Wally fell asleep, hunched forward awkwardly over the tray table with his nearly-completed homework in the chilly med bay. Twenty minutes later, he jolted upright after dreaming up the awfully _real_ sensation of a scalpel slowly sliding down the knobs of his spine.

  


Heart fluttering madly, he got back to work with trembling hands, and made a note to ask Dick about soundproofing his room against Kryptonian hearing.

  


He _definitely_ wasn't getting any more sleep tonight.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lightspeed energy bars are from the "Justice League" cartoon series, season 2 episodes #13 and #14 "Eclipsed" parts 1 and 2, where the Flash (Wally) endorses them/gets taken advantage of by an agent/advertising firm to earn money so he can buy a car, specifically, possibly the most ridiculous van ever to be conceived, the "Flash Mobile".


	4. Monday, Part 1

**Keystone City, Monday, August 30 2010, 05:43 CDT**

  
  


Wally had to fight to keep his eyes open on the run from Central's zeta out to Keystone.

  
  


The school breakfast program wouldn't start for another half an hour or so, so he figured he might as well try and swing by his house, see if he could maybe talk to either of his parents before school started. It would depend on if either - or both - of them got called in early on a Monday, but maybe they could work things out before that...?

  
  


He decelerated as the turn onto his street came in sight, then skidded to a near-stop under the relative cover of Mrs. Mendelson's giant weeping elm, emerging from the other side at a much more normal-human-appropriate jog. Most of the houses on this street were just waking up for the day, populated as it was by nine-to-fivers and the elderly, but it became clear as Wally got closer that both of his parents' cars were gone.

  
  


Well that sucked.

  
  


He walked past the house slowly to confirm that no one was home, and habitually reached for his phone to check the time and maybe text Dick. It was an hour later there, he  _ had _ to be up by now, right?

  
  


Patting at his empty pockets for a few seconds with the confusion of the distracted, Wally groaned as he remembered he didn't have his phone with him; it was sitting on his desk, plugged through a USB port to charge off of his computer so it would be handy  _ and _ charging while he was at his desk, inside his parents' locked house.

  
  


He was just about to turn the corner, when the thought of spending the  _ whole school day _ without his phone - without goofing off on the internet between classes, without access to his PLoS reader app for when he was bored to tears in a class and the Public Library of Science was calling to him, without being able to challenge Dick to a spontaneous game of backgammon or available for his teammates to call in case of an emergency - caused him to pull up short.

  
  


His inbox was probably  _ full  _ of missed calls and texts awaiting answers.

  
  


... The latch on the upstairs bathroom window was broken from letting out one too many roomfuls of steamy shower air, come to think of it. It was small, but...

  
  


He turned around, then jogged back to the rear of the house, throwing a wave and an easy smile at the three power-walking housewives that had just turned onto the street as he passed them, each with the same short-but-strangely-poofy hairstyle common to new mothers just discovering the amount of time children can suck out of their lives, and lopping off most of their hair as a sacrifice.

  
  


... Wally's mom had short hair like that, too.

  
  


Subconsciously wrapping his arms around himself, Wally ducked out of sight, then zeroed in on the small, high-set, second story window.

  
  


It was shut, naturally, and the window sill outside was awfully narrow. He backed up across the lawn to give himself a running start.

  
  


"Come on, Wall-man; nothing to it."

  
  


In the end, he didn't need as much of a start as he'd thought.

  
  


He bolted toward the window as fast as he could manage in the relatively confined space of the backyard, and right on up the side of the house. The vinyl siding dented inwards temporarily under his weight, but the faux-wood finish offered just enough traction for his beat up sneakers, until finally he had a hand, then an arm, clinging to the skinny ledge.

  
  


It took a bit of flailing with his free hand, but eventually he managed to push the window open and wriggle in, only to land in an undignified heap, shoulder-first, in the hard acrylic bowl of the bathtub.

  
  


"Ugh,  _ so _ not cool..." he grumbled while hauling himself upright, then zipped to his room.

  
  


As soon as he passed the threshold, it felt like a weight had been pulled of his shoulders. Everything that was important to him - that wasn't person-shaped, anyway - was in this room, and he'd missed them over the weekend, even though he'd been gone for longer without issue before.

  
  


It probably had to do with  _ why _ he hadn't seen them, this time around. His parents were just so  _ angry _ Friday night.

  
  


Not having a lot of time left to get to school – raiding the kitchen before talking it out with his parents would  _ seriously _ undermine any points he might try to make later – he zipped around the room, gathering up his phone, school bag – and mentally kicking himself for losing sleep over redoing the assignment now, but maybe he could turn both of them in for extra credit? – as well as a few odds and ends to take to the Cave later, in case he had to stay there for an extended period again, like for a quarantine for anti-meta pathogens or something – stranger things had happened – and some spare cash.

  
  


With a last glance around for anything he may have forgotten, Wally bounded down the stairs – no  _ way _ was he going out the way he came in when there was a perfectly good front door to leave through – and past a stack of flattened boxes on his way out the door, pausing only long enough to make sure the door locked behind him.

  
  


Wally looked around to make sure no one was outside and able to see him at the moment, and bolted for school, in significantly higher spirits now that he was fully prepared for the day; Monday was Cinnamon Roll Day in the mornings, and he could practically feel his stomach cramping up in anticipation.

  
  


That, or it was simply cramping up from hunger. Either or, really.

  
  


As he ran, he decided to check his messages on his phone, glancing between the small glass screen and the road with enough speed to snap a regular person's neck.

  
  


No new messages.

  
  


... Huh.

  
  


Wally slipped the phone back into his pocket and concentrated on running like nothing was amiss. His friends just hadn't wanted to talk to him for three days.

  
  


No big deal.

  
  


The rest of the school day passed in a blur of tedium, food of questionable edibility, and a brief shock of PE-football-induced hide and seek.

 

He didn't touch his phone once.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The start time for Keystone High School (7:25; I fabricated a breakfast program start time of 6:15 from this, which is pure conjecture) is based on the actual start time of a high school in Kansas City, Kansas which I can't remember the name of; in my stories, I base the timezone/location of Keystone and Central Cities off of Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri, respectively. (As an amusing aside, the Wikipedia entry for Kansas City, MS states this: "It is the central city of the Kansas City metropolitan area[...]")


	5. Monday, Part 2

**Keystone City, Monday, August 30 2010, 19:32 CDT**

 

The sun was just starting to set in Keystone, and Wally was walking down a street that was only vaguely familiar, pale and shaking.

 

They... They didn't...

 

His mouth kept opening like a surprised fish, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get the words to properly shape themselves in his mouth. _He just couldn't understand._

 

At first, he'd thought there might be mind control or something involved – had he unwittingly tracked something in on his suit sometime? – but that possibility had been thrown aside pretty quickly.

 

He absently rubbed a hand over his cheekbone, grateful in a detached sort of way that the tenderness, and hopefully the discoloration, was all but gone.

 

 _How could they_ say they didn't... That _he_ wasn't even...

 

Wally shuddered, then nearly jumped out of his skin when a hand lightly touched his shoulder.

 

"Gah!"

 

"Whoa! Easy there, Kid."

 

Wally turned around at a speed only _just_ within the range of acceptable norms.

 

"Wha-? _Jay_?"

 

There was a distinctly mischievous air to the smile the man who was practically his grandfather gave him. "Your thoughts run away with you there, or am I still that good at sneaking around?"

 

"Both," Wally replied immediately and automatically, and the first Flash grinned at him. Shaking himself once all over, kind of like a dog, he let the negative thoughts fall to the background for a moment, and smiled. "What are you doing here?"

 

"Me?" Jay laughed, then turned to look across the street at a _familiar_ -looking house. "I live here. So the better question here is: what are _you_ doing over in my neck of the woods, in _casual clothes,_ on a school night?"

 

"Oh, well I, uh," Wally stalled, trying to think of how to explain his presence in the area outside of a patrol, without upsetting the first person he'd seen in days that was honestly and truly happy to see him. He just couldn't make himself do that to Jay, so he selectively edited, instead. "I've just been trying to figure something out, and I always think better while moving."

 

"And let me guess, your feet ran off with the rest of you?" Seeing Wally's sheepish expression in response, Jay grinned and slung an arm around Wally's shoulders, gently tugging him across the street and up the front steps. "Come on inside and have a snack at least, before your wandering feet take you straight into the river, or God knows what else."

 

The door opened into a veritable _wall_ of good smells. Brownies, cake, cookies, and something fruity, like a pie or cobbler; Joan was baking.

 

"Guess what I found, wandering around outside like a stray puppy," Jay called out over the sound of an electric mixer, then let his arm drop from around Wally on his way to the stiflingly warm kitchen. Wally glanced around at the small, unassuming house of the first Flash and his wife while absentmindedly wiping his shoes off on the doormat, then followed.

 

"It better not be another robot spider," Joan replied in a mock serious tone, then turned toward the doorway while brushing her slightly sweaty hair back from her face with her arm, instead of her floury hands. "Because if I have to clean up _one more_ robospider w- Wally!"

 

"Hey, Mrs. Garrick," he teased lightly with a smile, then walked into the room so he could give her a hug. “Totally not a spider, here, robot or otherwise.”

 

"How many _times_ do I have to tell you to call me Joan?" She moaned exaggeratedly at the ceiling, awkwardly trying to hug Wally with her elbows, so she could keep her hands clear of his clothes.

 

"You know our deal; as many times as it takes me to convince you to let me build you a rocket pack," he replied, then leaned away from the hug just far enough to throw her a cheeky wink. He could practically _feel_ the stress of the last few days draining out of his body, just by being here.

 

"Whatever would I need with a rocket pack?" Joan asked rhetorically, then stepped back to her mixing bowl. She turned it off, then cleaned off the mixer paddle and pulled the bowl away "I fly around enough as it is."

 

"How far along are you?" Jay asked, as Wally gravitated toward a rack of banana bread loaves, turned on their sides to cool. He'd been craving banana since noon yesterday...

 

"I've just got to bake the apples after I finish these tarts," Joan replied, suddenly appearing by Wally's elbow to swat his wandering hands away from the sweets. "Ah ah, don't touch, dear; these are for the auction."

 

"Auction?" Wally pouted at her fleetingly, then went back to staring at the banana bread.

 

"It's a neighborhood fundraising auction. People donate things to bid on, and the proceeds go to the GCDRF," Jay answered while rooting around the fridge for two protein shakes and a blue-lidded tupperware container of chicken salad. Arms full, he nodded his head significantly in the direction of the bread box, and Wally zipped over to grab a loaf of wheat bread, something to spread with from the silverware drawer, and a plate to set sandwiches on. Jay led him back out of the kitchen, past the nearly overflowing table, to the coffee table in the living room, where they rapidly started assembling the sandwiches, talking about what Jay had been up to recently – building a new storage shed, as it turned out – while they worked.

 

Everyone that lived in or moved into Keystone and Central eventually heard about the GCDRF, or Gem Cities Disaster Relief Fund. It was an allowance of money from the federal government, pooled between the two cities and offset by private donation, used to rebuild the either or both of the sister cities after natural disasters or, most often, supervillain attacks. Between it, and the amount of clean up and reconstruction Wally accompanied Uncle Barry to, the Gem Cities had the fastest disaster recovery time in the nation, possibly the world.

 

Wally was proud of his home and uncle, but he always felt guilty about the amount of damage that was caused every time they confronted the Rogues.

 

Once the last slice of the loaf had been turned into a sandwich, the two speedsters dug in with gusto; embarrassingly, Wally even made 'happy eating noises,' as Aunt Iris called them, when the flavor of the first grape burst across his tongue.

 

He was hungrier than he'd thought, it turned out.

 

"Sorry there's nothing warn for you to eat, boys," Joan called from the kitchen at the sound, underscored by quiet chopping sounds. "I've just been baking all day."

 

"Don't you worry about us; we've got plenty to eat, here," Jay replied, good-naturedly, while Wally suddenly struggled to swallow his mouthful of food.

 

"Do you have a lot of money to raise?" Wally asked once his mouth was clear, sipping at his protein shake. It was strawberry – usually his favorite – but suddenly tasted flat and chalky.

 

"We're trying to raise twice as much as last year," Joan confirmed, and Wally felt sick; he'd thought the disaster-level crime rate had gone down...?

 

He wasn't doing enough.

 

Wally chugged the last of his drink and popped the last bite of his second sandwich into his mouth – there was no point, plus it would be disrespectful, to waste the food – then stood up. Jay looked at him curiously, mouth full and hands holding his fifth sandwich.

 

"I should probably get going," Wally said by way of explanation, then shuffled for the nearest door outside – the back door.

 

"Already?" Joan asked, looking up at him as he passed through the kitchen to get to the door, from behind a pot that smelled strongly of brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter.

 

"Yeah," he answered as Jay followed him into the room with the plate of sandwiches. "I've still got to run patrol, and do my homework..."

 

... And figure out where he was going to sleep, tonight.

 

It was tempting, for a moment, to just _ask_ if he could sleep on the Garricks' couch tonight, since he was already here, and Wally's mouth even opened to do so, when Jay zipped over, holding out half the stack of sandwiches bagged up in the package from the used loaf.

 

"Take something with you to snack on later, then," Jay said, and Wally looked from his smiling, aged face, to the large amount of food he was trying to give him, to Joan, and the massive spread of food she'd been slaving on all day, to raise money for the messes he wasn't fast enough to take care of before they happened.

 

Wally's eyes felt hot.

 

He couldn't impose on them that way, not with all the ways they were already – always – helping him.

 

"I love you guys, you know that?" He told them with forced lightness, and Jay laughed.

 

"Sure, Kid," he said, and Wally reluctantly took the bag from his hand.

 

"Come visit us again, and sooner this time, dear," Joan said with a smile, and Wally nodded, abashed, then opened the door.

 

"I will," he promised, then turned to look out the door, and saw Jay's new storage shed.

 

He got an idea.

 

"... Hey, Jay?"

 

"Yeah, Kid?" Jay asked, fleetingly resting a hand on Wally's shoulder, expression alert. Wally figured that Jay thought he was going to ask him to patrol the city with him while Barry was gone, but he didn't want to put him through the trouble.

 

Wally had to phrase his request right, though.

 

"My p-parents wanted to redecorate my room," he started carefully, but still stumbled over _that_ word so soon after... _everything_. Luckily, Jay and Joan hadn't seemed to notice. "And I need to store some things while they work on stuff and get everything the way they like it. Could I... maybe put a few boxes in your shed? Just for a little while?"

 

Jay deflated a little while Joan let out a rather relieved-sounding breath, then he smiled. "Sure thing; it's pretty much empty in there right now, so you can drop them off whenever you need to."

 

"I'll bring some by after patrol, if that's all right?" Wally asked, relieved when Jay just nodded, still smiling. "Okay; thanks again Jay, Joan."

 

He had just enough time to see Joan's eyes widen in surprise as he threw them a little wave, then sped off.

 

Wally ran to the empty building he'd stashed the boxes of his belongings in after discovering them on the street by the garbage can after coming home from school earlier, and the... with his parents, the...

 

No, he wasn't thinking about that right now.

 

Instead, he wolfed down another sandwich and changed into his uniform to start his patrol.

 

He would takes the boxes from the building to the Garricks' after he'd finished.

 

... That building was only empty because the uppermost floors had been bombed out a while back, and the foundation needed to be inspected for cracks, all of which was being paid for by the GCDRF.

 

He had to do better, starting with _this_ patrol.

 

Guilt sat heavy in his stomach the whole time.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end time for Wally's school is 3:30, as shown in the Young Justice episode "Infiltrator". (As an interesting aside, that same episode shows a map that puts Central City in the area of Kansas City, MS; the same display also shows a height scale as Wally comes out of the Mt. Justice zeta beam that isn't especially accurate or to scale. It looks like his height's recorded in centimeters at first - between 180 and 190 - but that would place his height between 5'10" and 6'2" as a fifteen-year-old, and would imply that the rest of the Team taller than him, as well as the Justice League, should all be playing basketball. The Flash wiki also states Wally's adult height as 6'2", and men tend to continue growing into their 20s. Trying to follow the hash marks without the inaccurately labelled number values puts his height anywhere from about 3'9" to 7'6". Independent research into the average height of fifteen-year-old boys with Wally's body mass index - estimated from adult ratios worked backward and visual evaluation - led me to place his height for this age for my stories at around 5'2". Yes, I fell down the research rabbit hole over this.)


	6. Tuesday

**Gotham City, Tuesday, August 31 2010, 03:07 EDT**

  


Dick flopped backwards onto his bed with an exhausted sigh, arms flung out perpendicular to his body. Spending quality time with Bruce was always a welcome event, but two 13-hour flights in the last three or so days _plus_ multiple timezone shifts took a lot out of him.

  


They'd gotten back _just_ in time for him to rush off to school.

  


Bruce had 'suited up' and gone out to WayneTech HQ as soon as they'd gotten back to finalize the results of their trip to Hong Kong – he'd managed to catch a power nap on the jet between business calls, even with the unpleasant noise and cabin pressure that came with flying, lucky dog – but Dick had mostly spent his day one step away from literally holding his eyes open during classes. It was only because of Barbara's quick reflexes that he hadn't drowned in his soup at lunch.

  


Once he got home, he may or may not have drooled on his History textbook when he was supposed to be learning about the Enlightenment. There _may_ have been a somewhat-disturbing dream about that, and the supposed light levels of the Dark Ages. He _**may**_ have been an anthropomorphized flashlight in said dream.

  


It'd been an _interesting_ day, to say the least.

  


After he'd woken up and actually _done_ his homework, instead of trying to learn through osmosis, he'd had to rush through his warm-up routines so he could properly launch himself from the light fixtures when Bruce walked in for sparring.

  


He hadn't expected to win – and he hadn't; Bruce was, like, three times his size _and_ more experienced – but he managed to knock Bruce flat on his back a few times, so it was all good.

  


From that, they'd gone straight to a typically-busy patrol, and now Dick was officially free to indulge in several uninterrupted hours of unconsciousness.

  


So of course, he couldn't sleep.

  


"Ugh," he thumped a loosely curled fist into his comforter, then reflexively winced as his arm twitched from the impact. Right, shattered glass – bad.

  


Unable to keep his thoughts from replaying that particular encounter to find whatever particular weakness in his technique led to the injury, Dick screwed his eyes shut and tried to think of something, _anything_ , more likely to relax him enough to sleep.

  


A few minutes later, his eyes popped back open with realization. "Duh."

  


He'd call Wally; no one put him at ease quite like that red-headed dork.

  


Twisting _just_ until he could reach the cell on his nightstand with his foot, Dick transferred it to his hand and turned on the speaker phone function. Scrolling through his contact list, he found Wally's picture: his hair was standing on end while his face was covered in soot from a recent explosion, except for two round circles of cleanliness around his eyes like an inverse raccoon and his white, grinning smile; the picture was a couple years old, but if he remembered correctly, he'd just stolen Wally's goggles and put them on his own face a few minutes before. There might be a picture of the two of them on Wally's phone, if he hadn't deleted it to make space for newer pictures or transferred it to his computer.

  


Dick hit the little green 'Call' button, got comfortable, then dropped the phone next to his ear.

  


It rang for several long moments – long enough Dick started to guiltily consider that his friend might be sleeping, even if it was only a little after 2 AM there – when Wally picked up, unusually breathless.

  


"Rob?"

  


"Hey, man," Dick greeted him casually, to hint to him that this was a call between friends, not teammates. "How's it going?"

  


"Slow as always," Wally answered reflexively, causing Dick to snort quietly while something papery crinkled on the other end. "I, uh," he said, then paused briefly before continuing. "I hadn't heard from you in a while."

  


Something tightened in Dick's stomach, but he tried to laugh it off. “You sound like my girlfriend.” Wally had just started to reluctantly join him in the chuckling when he interrupted. "Anyway, yeah; sorry about that. B took me with him to Hong Kong after the fo-asco that was Friday."

  


" _ **Fo**_ -asco?" Wally asked skeptically, mouth full.

  


"Yeah; you know," Dick explained gleefully, turning on his side to face his phone. "Worse then a fee-asco and fi-asco, but not quite to the level of a fum-asco, yet." He snickered when he heard Wally choke for a second.

  


"You're so _weird_ ," he finally said after he recovered.

  


"Yup," he chirped, probably a little too loudly for the time of night, but it wasn't like Bruce or Alfred were sleeping yet. Then he remembered something. "Oh, remind me the next time I see you; I picked up a souvenir for you while I was gone."

  


"Yeah?" There was no missing the excitement in Wally's voice.

  


"Two of them, even," he confirmed, well aware that Barry still hesitated when it came to his nephew and crossing the Pacific; standing up for his best friend aside, Dick couldn't blame him, considering the last time they'd tried Wally's blood sugar levels tanked in the middle of the water. From what he later learned, Wally had stumbled and fell, skipping across the surface of the water for nearly one hundred yards before sinking in. Luckily, KF had managed to keep his head above water until Flash could circle back around and yank him out while running by, unable to stop on the water's surface unless he wanted to fall in, too. Barry had had to carry his nearly-unconscious nephew for about 600 miles _while also_ radioing in some emergency rations.

  


Wally told him that they'd ended up having a picnic on Wake Island with 'Uncle Hal', but Dick could tell that he'd been bummed about not making it all the way to their goal of mainland China. It was one reason he'd been so happy to see the 'cupboards' added to Wally's suit for the Team redesign. The extra armor didn't hurt, either, even though it _did_ restrict movement, Dick could admit. The guards on his shoulders made them look broader and –

  


A loud car horn came over the speaker, and Dick jolted back into the present. "Are you outside? I thought you guys didn't usually have to do stuff at night."

  


There was a moment of hesitation that concerned him a little, but then Wally breezed out a reply. "Nah; it's just muggy here so I have my window open. Uncle Barry left with Hal on Friday night, anyway; the bigwigs have been getting stuff like the night shift." It was funny, sometimes, the euphemisms they used to refer to superhero activities on unsecured channels.

  


Something about that pause kept niggling at the back of his brain, so Dick was tempted to ask about it, when Wally changed the subject. "Can I ask you a question?"

  


"Ye-ah?" Dick asked, yawning halfway through the word.

  


"Do you know what I need to do to soundproof my room at the Mountain?"

  


Dick blinked slowly at his ceiling for a moment. "… Uh, yeah? … Why?"

  


"Well, I, uh... accidentally fell asleep there on the weekend, and the noise bothered Supey. I figure if my room were soundproof like some of the others, I could sleep as loud as I want without getting on the bad side of that temper."

  


"There's some sound baffles and stuff in one of the storage rooms," Dick said sleepily, idly listening to the sound of crinkling plastics on Wally's end for a moment. "In the meantime, just use my room or something. S'already proofed."

  


"Really?"

  


"Mhm..."

  


Wally laughed softly, and Dick could practically see the accompanying smile; that might be because his eyes were shut, though. "Dude, you are so out of it. Get some sleep."

  


"Trying." He reached toward the top of his bed, and pulled the comforter down halfway around his body, lying sideways on the bed. It was already warm from his body heat.

  


Wally playfully hummed the first few notes of three or four different lullabies, then huffed out a breath that could have been a laugh if more force had been used. "Goodnight, man."

  


Dick yawned again, and gave in to the inevitable. "'Night, Wally."

  


He fell asleep to the soft chime of his phone indicating the end of a call.

  


* * *

 

Wally slipped his phone back into his pocket with a sigh, then used his free hand to tear off the bitten end of a mostly-whole hotdog, throwing that and its wrapper back away. He scarfed down the relatively safe remainder as he turned away from the park bench he'd been previously trying to nap on, toward the zeta transport.

  


Dick was the _best_.

  


As long as he didn't bother anyone, he at least had somewhere to sleep, and after school, he could look for that storage room. Hopefully there won't be a reason for Robin to stay over at the Cave for a while until he'd found what he needed and finished construction.

  


Maybe he could even get a snack from the kitchen in the morning; Jay's sandwiches hadn't lasted as long as he'd hoped and he was about to burn off that hot dog right now.

  


He'd probably get in the way, though.

  


… If all else failed, there was his supply of Lightspeed Bars for missions to fall back on.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes about Dick's and Bruce's Trip to Hong Kong:  
> \- It was about 8,028 miles one way, working from the idea that YJ's Gotham is a gritty, New York-type city taking the place of Hartford, Connecticut. (YJ put Gotham's position on a map somewhere in CT if I remember correctly - I looked it up a while ago - which I went with since they also had New York as a separate location on said map. It gets tricky, because when I tried to look up locations from the comics, they kind of had Gotham and Metropolis as both New York. I haven't found if they indicated in YJ where they placed Metropolis, so until I know more definitively, I'm tentatively placing it as Atlanta...)  
> \- On a private jet equivalent to a Gulfstream G-VI (capable of holding 19 passengers, costing $6,000-$9,000 an hour to rent, with a range of about 8,053 miles), flight time each way would have been about 13.161 hours, at 610 mph.  
> \- Flight costs alone (I didn't look up hotel prices, although I vaguely feel like I should have, even though it has nothing to do with the story) would be $78,963.94-$118,445.90 one way, or $157,927.87-$236,891.80 round trip. (It's good to be Bruce Wayne, I guess; realistically, though, the cost would likely be less because the jet would probably be already owned by WayneTech, ergo no rental costs, though there would be staffing and maintenance costs which I'm not looking up because I'm not, in fact, the billionaire owner of a megacorporation.)  
> \- They left for Hong Kong: ~5:45 AM Saturday, early in the morning after the drama and Make Up Through Basketball as shown on the show, and arrived there: ~6:54 PM Saturday. They departed back for the States: ~5:55 PM Sunday, and got back: ~7:04 AM Monday, just in time for Dick to rush off to school.  
> \- In case I forget to mention it in a later chapter, the souvenirs Dick got for Wally are a pair of palm-sized mirrors, replica copies of antiques, because someone told him about the goddess Dian Mu from Chinese mythology, who used a pair of mirrors to make Flashes of Lightning, which made Dick think of his friend. (They both have this tendency, which is why there is an almost-suspicious amount of robin figures and (resin) statuary in the Manor's gardens.)


End file.
